


The Bitter Season

by ancestrallizard



Category: Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei Series
Genre: Character Study, Depression, F/M, Gen, pascal is still the best dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8425936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard
Summary: Despite everything, Kazuya considered himself fortunate.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written based on a prompt generator that used Silent Hill song titles. I got The Bitter Season.

Despite everything, Kazuya considered himself fortunate.

 

After the floodwaters receded and people began to trickle back down the mountains, he had a chance to try and help repair the devastated country. Humanity was coalescing again into towns and cities, ones larger and more complex than before the flood. There were problems everywhere; People needed supplies, protection from demons, and assistance re-organizing. Kazuya would fight in their defense when he was needed, but he also worked as a mediator, balancing squabbles between new towns and local governments within them, helping to ensure that the new, fragile peace didn’t blow up in everyone’s faces.

 

Privately, he never thought he was the right person for the job. He hadn’t even been able to stop his own friends from going for each other’s throats, but people respected him, for whatever reason. They listened to him, and took what he said seriously. Neither he nor Yuka were especially favored by either the Gaeans or the Messians, but the cults were vastly outnumbered by people who weren’t allied with either faction. And in their eyes, Kazuya and Yuka were heroes.

 

So they moved to whatever new city needed them most, with no permanent home of their own. They left Valhalla in well enough shape, the rest of the complex growing around it like grasping metal vines, and traveled far north, to a growing town with no official name but some were beginning to call Midgard. Gaeans and Messians weren’t as much of an influence there as they were in Tokyo, but there were enough of them that it was still crucial to get the camps to cooperate for the good of everyone. Getting them to agree on what was built where and who was in charge was a frustrating, almost impossible job, but after almost two years of doing similar work elsewhere Kazuya liked to think he was getting at least a little bit better at it. It helped that the town was built on rough, higher ground, which left enough buildings free from flood damage that shelter was not a pressing issue.

 

He didn’t have to do it alone at least. Pascal was still unflinchingly loyal even after so many years. The demon accompanied Kazuya almost everywhere, garnering wary looks as he followed him on duties. However, the people quickly came to know Pascal’s calm and caring nature, and they grew used to him. Many even doted on the demonic dog; there were always pats on the head or spare treats for him whenever he went into town, and he became a favorite playmate for the few children who lived in Midgard. And Kazuya wouldn’t have been able to do half of what he was doing without Yuka alongside him. She took to her position of leadership and guidance like it was her birthright, and in a way it was. She had a skill for speaking to people, and a mixture of confidence and compassion that inspired them, while Kazuya had patience and the determination to keep looking for new solutions where none were obvious. They complimented each other, and the people of Midgard regarded them as equals in terms of influence and authority.

 

Pascal wasn’t the only one who got unwanted attention early on. The first few months, people’s eyes lingered constantly on Kazuya’s scars. It didn't bother him as much as it might have in the past, as he’d gotten more than used to such treatment in Valhalla. He limped from a wyrm bite that never healed completely, but that wasn’t as obvious as the empty eye socket he covered with a patch and the long scars from where his eye had been clawed from his head. Even if he was uncomfortable with the attention the scars often earned him, he was still begrudgingly grateful for them. They were evidence he’d made it through hell in one piece, more or less. 

 

Kazuya valued what little he had, held it close, and worked to make a better world for those around him. He considered himself fortunate.

 

So he could not understand why the feelings kept coming back.

 

He usually had some warning before they began to roll in again. Often it was heralded by nightmares that left his muscles locked and heart pounding. Other times the signs were subtler, a stutter in his train of thought and a sudden loss of attention in the middle of the day.

 

But sometimes he didn’t get any warning at all. He woke on his cot one such winter morning with fog clouding his brain and a heavy hole in his chest.

 

Kazuya got up and stepped quietly to the window, careful not to wake Pascal, who was sleeping curled up at the foot of his bed. There was not a hint of the sun on the dark horizon. He rubbed the sleep from his eye, threw on a wrinkled set of clothes lying on his desk, picked up a set of keys, and left.

 

He’d been offered more luxurious housing when he’d first arrived, large and furnished and set apart and above everyone else, but he’d refused, asking if he could choose his own lodgings instead. He lived at present in what had been a small university, before almost half of it was destroyed by the bombing thirty years previous. The building had been converted into a tech lab, handling the software and hardware related to COMPs. Unfortunately the room was somewhat far away from where Yuka lived, but it let him be close to his work, and by living there he hoped that people would stop thinking of him as some savior, once they saw him in a more ordinary context.

 

He unlocked and entered the lab, leaving the door open. The room hummed softly with electronic and magical energy in the still morning hours, and the few digital clocks told him in blurred red numbers that it was sometime past 1. Kazuya took a seat at his work space in the back of the lab and started up his computer. His table was even messier than his room, covered in paper, pens, pencils, books on the occult that had somehow escaped flood damage, and the shell of a burnt out COMP.

 

Kazuya worked on COMP modifications when he could, as their lives depended on the small devices. It was the most complex program he’d ever had to work with, requiring both knowledge of computers, which he had, and knowledge of the occult, which he did not. He had to further his skills with programming as well as request teaching from the priests of the cathedral of shadows in the towns they'd stayed in, but it had paid off. He’d made efficiency changes and learned how to expand demon storage capacity the way Stephen did effortlessly. Now, as he reviewed pseudo code from the day before, he was creating the beginnings of a program that would let people carry out demon fusions within the COMP itself. His program would be very bare bones, without the ability to preform complex fusions or fuse demons with weapons, but the ability alone to fuse a stronger demon in a pinch could be lifesaving.

 

Programming was his lifeline, and he could always loose himself in the constant trial and error of trying to make something that worked. It didn’t make him happy, exactly, but it drew his focus in a way that that drowned out the thoughts that weren't focused on the problem in front of him. And besides which, if he was going to be awake he might as well do something useful. 

 

Nails clicked across the floor towards him as the computer finally finished booting up. The source of the sounds stopped at his feet and stretched out at th base of the table. He bent over to scratch Pascal between the ears. The demon licked his hand with his rough sandpaper tongue, and sighed softly before falling back asleep.

 

Time sped into the safe monotony of writing, crossing things out, double-checking with the occult texts, and subsequently crossing even more out, until he hit a wall, which happened all too frequently with this project. He made a small noise of frustration and began to review his notes yet again when Pascal sat up, ears perked and staring intently behind him. A half second later a courtesy knock came from the open door. 

 

A blurry shape stood in the doorway, backlit somewhat by the early morning sun. Kazuya squinted to see who it was, but even as he did he recognized the shawl she wore ever since they’d first met, even though it was burnt and ragged at the edges, and the stray brown wisps of hair that never stay combed down that now glowed nearly golden in the sunlight.

 

“Mind if I come in?” Yuka asked.

 

Kazuya nodded and went back to work. Yuka approached from the left, steering clear of his blind side. She knelt to pet Pascal as Kazuya cleared books and paper away from the spot next to him on the table. She hopped up to sit on the space he'd cleared. He hunched his shoulders slightly as he wrote, skin prickling under Yuka’s scrutinizing gaze. 

 

“How long have you been awake?” Her tone was soft for all that the words were direct.

 

The blur of the clock could have showed a 5 or a 6. “Not that long.” He said.

 

His lie was met with knowing silence. He leaned back in his chair, pencil loose in his grip, fatigue and his thoughts creeping up on him, eye starting to close. “Maybe a while.”

 

Yuka’s fingers nudged his hand, and he opened it without a word and let their fingers intertwine. The grip was somewhat awkward and new, but steadfast and strong all the same. They stayed like that for a bit. Now that he stopped to listen, he heard distant voices outside from the cracked window of people attending to their morning chores. 

 

“What do you have to do today?” She asked.

 

“Work on the Cathedral program some more. Once I finish writing it I'll need someone to spot me before I can test it.” He grimaced. “And I need to go to the meeting about where to build the new clinic.”

 

Yuka winced in sympathy. Meetings were boring at best and actively hazardous at worst. Even after so much cooperation, the Messian and Gaean factions still tried to undercut each other at every turn when it came to who was in charge of what, and a purposefully neutral clinic was no exception. Unaffiliated representatives technically outnumbered them, but all the noise and dissent the factions caused would make anyone think otherwise. Some of the more impassioned members had nearly come to blows more than once. Kazuya’s temples ached at the thought of it.

 

“I’ll do it,” She said. “I’ll go to the meeting for you.” 

 

He looked at her, startled. “What? No, y-you d-don’t –“ He stopped and took a breath to get his stutter under control. “You don’t have to do that, I can handle it.”

 

She shook her head. “No, I’ve got the time, I’ll do it. You can work with your team on the Cathedral program.”

 

He didn’t want to inconvenience her, but at the same time he couldn’t deny that it felt like a slight burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He squeezed her fingers lightly. “Thank you.”

 

She waved off his thanks nonchalantly. “Don’t mention it.” She stared at him for a beat, then cupped his cheek with her free hand and leaned in. He mirrored the action, and closed his eye as she bumped her forehead lightly against his, her loose strands of hair brushing the sides of his face. Traces of her magic sparked where their skin touched, Zio and healing and Almighty magic all swirling together and humming with the energy of the sky before a summer storm. Suddenly, irrationally, Kazuya dreaded the contact as much as he craved it, afraid that somehow the thoughts he was trying to run from would bleed into her. Softly, Yuka said, “Also, take a shower. You smell terrible.”

 

She hopped down from the table and pet Pascal again. “You take care of him, okay? Make sure he remembers to take breaks, and gets some water.”

 

“Why are you telling _him_ that?”

 

“Honestly, because he has more common sense than you.” Yuka said plainly. Pascal barked in agreement. Kazuya shook his head at the blatant display of treachery. Betrayed by his own dog.

 

Yuka left, and Kazuya turned back to his notes. He thought he could see a way around the wall, if only he added a new command line – 

 

Pascal was staring at him.

 

“I was going to stop as soon as I finished this.”

He continued to stare, unrelenting.

 

Kazuya wrote down the barest version of the idea and left to shower.

 

He took a short cold shower (They didn’t have dependable hot water yet, but he didn’t mind – After the first few months in the new Tokyo, any running water at all was good enough for him), got some water and food for himself and Pascal, and went back to his room to get his eye patch. By the time he returned to the lab, it was full of people working at their own tables.

 

Kazuya kept working on the program, but now he had someone to work with, a former drifter merchant named Cel who decided to permanently set up shop in Midgard. They collaborated fairly often, as Cel helped teach him about the occult knowledge he was still unfamiliar with. And past their familiarity with magic, Cel's strange and unconventional approaches to programing (as well as most things) helped Kazuya to look at things from a new angle. With Cel, he bypassed the block he’d faced earlier, and was ready to try running it.

 

He, Cel, and Pascal went to one of the testing rooms to try it out. They’d had new rules implemented recently, that there needed to be a spotter before anyone tested out new demon summoning programs, and that all tests should be done outside of the lab. Even when it was just a simulation, one could never entirely know how electronics would interact with magic. (The rules came about due to an incident when Cel, alone in the lab, accidentally summoned a basilisk far stronger than they could control. It escaped, though not before knocking over several computer monitors and taking a chunk out of their prosthetic arm. There weren't any fatalities before Kazuya and Yuka brought it down, but it had been a near thing).

 

Kazuya did not summon a Basilisk, or any other demon. The program ran successfully without fail, and Cel clapped him hard on the back after it completed, their mouth split into a grin of sharp and crooked teeth. “Great job, man! You got it!”

 

He couldn’t even manage a smile in reply. Kazuya had been working on the program for months, and anytime before, success would have had him ecstatic. Instead he felt numb and distant from his own body. He saw his dour face reflected in the dark tint of Cel’s goggles. “Um, yeah.” Kazuya gestured vaguely. “I’m going to, g-go sit down."

 

Cel’s grin lessened somewhat, and Kazuya felt a stab of regret at making them concerned. “Okay, okay. You call me if you need anything, alright?” They clapped him on the shoulder again, and left.

 

Kazuya drifted back to the lab and to his table, his head muddled.

 

His notes were covered in rewrites, faulty passages, and pages covered in so many cross-outs they were unintelligible messes of graphite and ink that stained his hands. There were more mistakes than anything else.

 

It didn’t mean much that the program worked. He’d only made the most basic version. Complications could crop up as they added more to it down the line, or there could be existing ones underneath the surface he wouldn’t see until it was too late. Then things would fall apart, and he'd be left in the aftermath wondering what, if anything, he could have done differently to stop it from happening. 

 

He was shocked out of his thoughts by a warm weight on his leg. Pascal had nosed his way under his master's arm to place his head on Kazuya's thigh. He rubbed his dog's head gratefully and released the death grip he'd unknowingly been giving a pencil, which had already splintered under the pressure.

 

He told Cel he was heading out for a while and left, his loyal dog following close behind. He considered heading back to his room, but his feet led him outside instead. He was surprised to see that the sun, faint past heavy clouds, was already past its peak and was beginning to descend in the pale sky. 

 

The university building had escaped the destruction that razed the buildings surrounding it, so there was not much around except for yellowed shrubs and grasses and low flat boulders that were all over the sparse town.

 

He climbed up one of the boulders, and Pascal settled in at the base. The lab was on a bit of a hill, and with no trees to block his line of sight he had a vantage point to view the rest of the town. The cold air bit at his fingers and ears. He shivered, and wished he’d brought something heavier to wear. 

 

Kazuya wasn’t sure how long he sat there. Long enough that his eyelids started to weigh heavy, the sleep he’d dodged hours ago starting to set it. He was about to head back in when he saw a familiar shape walking up the path. He waved, and she waved back as she hiked up the trail towards him. 

 

Yuka looked about the same as when he saw her last, except exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the long hike to get to the lab from the town hall. There were bags under her eyes and a furrow in her brow as she looked up at him. “How are you feeling?”

 

He shrugged a bit. “Not worse.” That was desirable in its own right. He was free of the thoughts that plagued him before, but there was no guarantee that would last even another hour. For the moment, he was fine.

 

She climbed up to sit next to him, and Kazuya leaned into her side at once, linking their hands together. She radiated warmth. Whether that was because she was a Zio spell user – he knew Agi spell users had body temperatures that ran higher than normal – or it was something that as just her, he didn’t know. But more than that, he’d missed her. He traced an old scar on the back of her hand with his thumb. “How’d it go?”

 

Yuka let out a long sigh, and some of the tension in her back and shoulders released. “Considering everything else I’ve been through, and I mean everything, that was still one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. I don’t know how you do it.”

 

He laughed at the thought that someone he’d fought alongside against humans, demons, and gods, might have finally met her match in bureaucracy of all things. “You don’t have to go again, then.” 

 

“If it helps you, I will,” She said seriously. Before he could tell her again that she didn’t have to, that he could power through and do it next time, she went on. “I know this,” She motioned between them a bit, indicating what had changed and made them not exactly closer, they’d already been close, but cast some uncertainty on how they related to each other, “is new, and sort of weird, but I’ve still got your back. If you need help, I’ll try to be there for you. And if that means going to boring, infuriating meetings, then I’ll do it.”

 

Kazuya was at a loss for words. It was a simple statement but for some reason it made him want to cry. Gratitude and love filled him in a rush that made him dizzy, and in a sudden burst of courage he rushed forward to kiss her cheek. Or, he meant to. She moved her head as he moved in, and he ended up clumsily kissing part of the corner of her mouth and most of her lips instead.

 

Yuka stared at him in surprise, face flushing red. He might have found her expression sort of funny if he wasn’t wearing the exact same one. He searched for anything he could say to make the situation less awkward, but he couldn’t think of anything. Her mouth was softer than he thought it would be. Maybe it’d be best if they just moved past it. “C-could-, um, could you tell me more about it? The meeting?”

 

She nodded. Her shock had faded fast, with only the faintest traces of red in her cheeks as an indication that anything had happened at all. She launched into the story of the horror show of an assembly as he stretched out on the rock. He let the sound of her voice wash over him as he looked up at the clouds above. By all appearances they were in the dead of winter, though he knew it wouldn’t remain so. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the season would pass.

**Author's Note:**

> He passes out like five minutes after the end of the story
> 
> If you like other smt stuff feel free to check out my tumblr; ancestrallizard.tumblr.com


End file.
